Inergy Automotive to lay off workers at former Visteon plant

By: Dustin Walsh CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

September 27, 2013

Inergy Automotive Systems LLC will lay off 104 UAW Local 600 employees at its Milan and New Boston, Mich., plants by the end of November, the company said in a statement issued to Crain's Detroit Business.

The majority of the layoffs will come out of its 1.28-million-square-foot Milan fuel systems plant, which Inergy acquired from Ford Motor Co. in 2011. Part of the deal included shuttering the plant and transferring business to its New Boston operations.

Production workers make up 93 of the layoffs, with the remainder being technicians.

The Troy, Mich.-based subsidiary of the French supplier Cie. Plastic Omnium SA, said production at the former Visteon Corp. plant has already ended and the decommissioning process will conclude by the end of the first quarter of 2014.

Ford Motor Co. assumed the plant from Visteon in 2005 and sold the plant to Inergy in 2011.

In December 2006, Ford said it had reached a memorandum of understanding to sell the fuel-tank plant to Urbana, Ill.-based Flex- N-Gate Corp., but that deal fell through in 2009.

In 2000, Ford spun off Visteon, once the second-largest U.S. auto parts maker. Visteon filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2009 and emerged from bankruptcy Oct. 1, 2010, after paring debt by $2.1 billion.

By returning plants and offices to Ford in 2005, Visteon shed responsibility for 18,000 workers represented by the UAW.